Daniel Larisonhttps://russia-insider.com/en
ennewsrussiaRussia InsiderFri, 14 Dec 2018 06:54:46 -0500Fri, 14 Dec 2018 06:55:12 -0500<a href="/en/trump-scrambles-africa-plans-pressure-african-leaders-chose-between-us-and-russia-and-china/ri25678" title="[field_meta_title]">Trump Scrambles for Africa, Plans to Pressure African Leaders to Chose Between the US, and Russia and China</a>https://russia-insider.com/en/trump-scrambles-africa-plans-pressure-african-leaders-chose-between-us-and-russia-and-china/ri25678
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<p><em>The Wall Street Journal</em> <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-to-declare-russia-china-national-security-threats-in-africa-11544704321?mod=e2tw" rel="nofollow">reports</a> on the Trump administration’s plans for U.S. policy in Africa:</p>
<blockquote><p>President Trump plans to reshape America’s policy in Africa by challenging the continent’s leaders to make a strategic choice to align themselves with America instead of Russia or China.</p>
<p>As he has done in other parts of the globe, Mr. Trump is angling to strengthen ties with like-minded African allies and isolate uncooperative leaders who work with America’s biggest competitors.</p>
<p>“The predatory practices pursued by China and Russia stunt economic growth in Africa, threaten the financial independence of African nations, inhibit opportunities for U.S. investment, interfere with U.S. military operations and pose a significant threat to U.S. national security interests,” John Bolton, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, is expected to say on Thursday in a speech unveiling the new approach.</p>
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<p><strong>U.S. security interests aren’t threatened by Chinese and Russian influence in Africa, and framing U.S. policy for the entire continent as a zero-sum great power competition isn’t going to be very appealing to African governments.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Considering how large and diverse Africa is, defining U.S. policy as one for the entire continent is not smart, and it will probably be taken as a sign that the administration doesn’t know what it’s talking about.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Most of these states had a history of non-alignment during the Cold War, and I suspect most of them will not want to be forced into making such a choice now. </strong></p>
<p>The administration’s plan is called “Prosper Africa,” but African governments will be understandably skeptical that Trump has any interest in seeing their countries prosper.</p>
<p><strong>The plan appears to be forcing African governments to choose Washington’s camp or risk facing “isolation” imposed by the U.S. That is a typically heavy-handed approach, and it’s one that won’t be welcomed.</strong></p>
<p>Part of Bolton’s speech will involve more of the usual U.N.-bashing that we expect from him, and it will apparently include a threat to cut off support for peacekeeping operations on the continent:</p>
<blockquote><p>Mr. Bolton also is expected to warn the United Nations that the Trump administration could end its support for peacekeeping efforts in Africa, home to seven of the 14 ongoing “blue helmet” operations.</p>
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<p>Yanking support for peacekeeping operations would be a good way to anger and alienate a lot of governments across the continent. It seems that Bolton’s hostility to the U.N. is so great that he doesn’t care if it undermines the larger policy that he is supposed to be unveiling. Just by threatening to take away that support, the administration is telling its would-be partners that it isn’t reliable. Much as it has done in other parts of the world, the Trump administration thinks that it can rely on threats to cajole states to take their side, but it is no more likely to work in Africa than it has anywhere else.</p>
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Fri, 14 Dec 2018 06:12:54 -0500Daniel Larison<a href="/en/trumps-very-dangerous-rhetoric-crimea/ri25317" title="[field_meta_title]">Trump's Very Dangerous Rhetoric on Crimea</a>https://russia-insider.com/en/trumps-very-dangerous-rhetoric-crimea/ri25317
<p>Yesterday Trump <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/trump-blames-obama-regime-for-ukraine-s-loss-of-crimea/29588249.html" rel="nofollow">faulted</a> Obama for “allowing” Russia to annex Crimea:</p>
<blockquote><p>“It was President Obama that allowed it to happen,” he said.</p>
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<p><strong>Trump has said something like this before more than once.</strong> Earlier this year, he <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/trump-blames-obama-for-russia-invading-ukraine-crimea-67fdd25c0bd7/" rel="nofollow">complained</a> that Obama was “the one that let Crimea get away” and suggested that “I may have had a much different attitude.” The following week, Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2018/06/15/trump-again-blames-obama-for-russian-annexation-of-crimea-says-he-may-meet-putin-in-the-summer/?utm_term=.9cf96958a373" rel="nofollow">said</a>, “President Obama lost Crimea, because President Putin didn’t respect President Obama.” <strong>The assumption that Russian actions hinge on their leader’s attitude towards ours is bizarre</strong> and ignores that Russia has agency and interests that have nothing to do with us or our presidents. Trump has repeated this often enough that <strong>it is worth spending a little time to pick apart this silly talking point.</strong></p>
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<p>Most reports on Trump’s remarks have focused on his choice to blame Obama for the annexation, but that is not nearly as important as <strong>the implication of Trump’s statement that he seems to think it is up to the American president to “allow” or “disallow” the actions of other major nuclear-armed powers. </strong></p>
<p><strong>Saying that Obama “allowed” the annexation of Crimea presupposes that there was something that Obama could or should have done to prevent or reverse it. Short of starting a shooting war with Russia and presumably causing WWIII, there was nothing Obama could have done,</strong> and it is a measure of Trump’s ignorance and his belligerent instincts that he thinks otherwise. Whether Russia controls Crimea or not is hardly a vital interest of the U.S., and it certainly isn’t worth risking a war. If Trump believes otherwise, he is even more reckless and irresponsible than we thought.</p>
<p>Trump talks about “losing” Crimea as if it were ours to lose. <strong>The language of “losing Crimea” is itself a throwback to the dumbest Cold War-era rhetoric that promoted the fantasy that it was within America’s power to “keep” or “lose” entire countries. That sort of thinking is delusional</strong>, and it’s very dangerous if this is how the president looks at international crises.</p>
<p>Obama didn’t “lose” Crimea, and it was never the responsibility of the U.S. government to stop what Russia did. Russia’s action was aggressive and illegal, but the U.S. was under no obligation to risk a war with a nuclear-armed state to undo it. The fact that Trump keeps harping about the “loss” of a part of a country that isn’t even allied to the U.S. shows just how far removed he is from a genuine America First foreign policy.</p>
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Sun, 11 Nov 2018 04:11:00 -0500Daniel Larison<a href="/en/third-attack-syria-would-be-just-illegal-last-two/ri24727" title="[field_meta_title]">A Third Attack on Syria Would Be Just as Illegal as the Last Two</a>https://russia-insider.com/en/third-attack-syria-would-be-just-illegal-last-two/ri24727
<p>The Trump administration is once again <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/10/us-ramps-up-threats-of-military-action-against-syria-assad-airstrike-trump-bolton/" rel="nofollow">threatening</a> to launch an illegal attack against the Syrian government:</p>
<blockquote><p>The United States is threatening to attack Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime for a third time should it use chemical weapons in an assault on the northwestern province of Idlib, marking a significant shift in strategy after months of indications that the United States would soon pull out of the conflict.</p>
<p>In the most explicit warning to date, U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, John Bolton, said Monday that the United States and its British and French allies had agreed that another use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government would trigger a significant escalation, compared to previous airstrikes.</p>
<p>“We’ve tried to convey the message in recent days that if there’s a third use of chemical weapons, the response will be much stronger,” Bolton said after a policy speech in Washington.</p>
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<p>The U.S. has attacked the Syrian government twice in the last two years in response to the regime’s use of chemical weapons, and both attacks were clearly illegal under the Constitution and the U.N. Charter. A third attack would be just as illegal. The fact that the U.S. has to keep striking and threatening the Syrian government tells us that previous strikes have been ineffective, and that means that additional strikes would likely be no better.</p>
<p>Bolton’s statement suggests that this third attack would be a significantly larger one than the previous two. If that’s the case, it runs an even greater risk of setting off a wider conflict with Syria, Iran, and Russia. The danger with each new attack is that our leaders may mistake forbearance by the Syrian government and its allies for an unwillingness to strike back, and so each time that the regime and its patrons don’t respond to an attack our leaders wrongly assume that they can keep attacking without consequence. One of these times they are going to be wrong about that, and the U.S. will find itself stumbling into a bigger conflict than it bargained for. The U.S. has nothing at stake in Syria that warrants taking that risk.</p>
<p>It is not the responsibility of the U.S. government to police the Syrian civil war. Our military has no business operating inside Syria or keeping American forces on Syrian territory. Attacking the Syrian government exposes U.S. forces in Syria to potential reprisals, and it serves no American security interests. The Trump administration doesn’t have a legal justification for what it has done in the past, and that is why it has <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/10/the-war-over-war-powers-heats-up-in-congress-state-department-middle-east-nominee-david-schenker-blocked-senator-tim-kaine-white-house-legal-authority-syria-strike-middle-east-diplomacy/" rel="nofollow">refused</a> to tell Congress how it thinks its previous attacks on Syria are justified. It isn’t telling Congress these things because it has nothing credible to offer and everyone knows it. The Trump administration would be wrong to launch more airstrikes on the Syrian government, and it has absolutely no authority to do so under the Constitution. There is likewise no justification for committing acts of war against the Syrian government when it is completely unrelated to self-defense.</p>
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Fri, 14 Sep 2018 06:09:24 -0400Daniel Larison<a href="/en/politics/trump-meeting-putin-do-netanyahus-bidding/ri24021" title="[field_meta_title]">Trump Is Meeting Putin to Do Netanyahu's Bidding</a>https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/trump-meeting-putin-do-netanyahus-bidding/ri24021
<p>The Trump administration <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/bolton-says-removing-iran-from-syria-trumps-deposing-assad-1530486068" rel="nofollow">wants</a> Russian help in expelling Iranian forces from Syria:</p>
<blockquote><p>National-security adviser John Bolton said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s hold on power wasn’t a strategic issue for the U.S. and that President Donald Trump hoped to secure Russia’s help in evicting Iranian forces from the country.</p>
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<p>Iran and Syria have been allies for decades, and Iranian support has been very valuable to the Syrian government over six years of war. It seems unlikely that there is anything Russia could offer the Syrian government that would cause them to turn their backs on that alliance, and it seems even more unlikely that the U.S. could offer Russia enough to get them to make an effort on our behalf. There are several other issues that matter more to U.S.-Russian relations that should take precedence at the upcoming Helsinki meeting. Beginning talks for an extension of New START is just one example of something that Trump and Putin might discuss more productively than indulging the same old Iran obsession.</p>
<p>The main question that needs to be asked is why driving Iranian forces out of Syria appears to be the top priority for the Trump administration. <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-meet-russias-putin-in-finland-on-july-16-1530187901?mod=article_inline" rel="nofollow">Israel</a> and Saudi Arabia might desire this outcome, but no U.S. interests are served by making this the priority. If the U.S. is focused on this to the exclusion of other concerns, that suggests that the administration is once again subordinating U.S. policy to the preferences of its reckless clients in the region.</p>
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Sat, 7 Jul 2018 04:07:40 -0400Daniel Larison<a href="/en/nyt-indulges-demented-senator-crusade-declare-russia-state-sponsor-terrorism/ri23280" title="[field_meta_title]">NYT Indulges Demented Senator on a Crusade to Declare Russia a 'State Sponsor of Terrorism'</a>https://russia-insider.com/en/nyt-indulges-demented-senator-crusade-declare-russia-state-sponsor-terrorism/ri23280
<p>Sen. Cory Gardner <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/opinion/russia-sponsoring-terrorism.html" rel="nofollow">made</a> a bizarre proposal last week:</p>
<blockquote><p>The State Department should consider adding the country to its list of state sponsors of terrorism, alongside its close allies Iran and Syria.</p>
<p>The moral case for such a designation is sound. Russia has invaded its neighbors Georgia and Ukraine, it supports the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad and our enemies in Afghanistan, and it is engaged in active information warfare against Western democracies, including meddling in the 2016 United States elections.</p>
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<p>While applying this label to Russia might make some hawks feel better, it is just as erroneous as Trump’s decision to relabel North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism. Unless a government is arming or funding or otherwise lending aid to a group that is engaged in international terrorism, it should not be labeled a state sponsor and should not be sanctioned as one. None of the things Gardner lists here makes Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, unless we are redefining terrorism to include all policies and actions that Washington doesn’t like.</p>
<p>As if to call attention to how weak his argument is, Gardner credulously asserts that Russia is supposedly supporting ISIS in Syria based on some uncorroborated news reports:</p>
<blockquote><p>There is also evidence that Russia is playing both sides of the conflict in Syria — defending the murderous Assad regime, but also fueling the radical insurgency against it. Reporting by Ukrainian news outlets has shown that Russia has provided material support to the Islamic State, including assistance in recruitment.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure what is more absurd here: that Gardner thinks that the Russian government would actually want to encourage jihadist recruitment inside Russia, or that he is basing this assertion on the reporting of Ukrainian news outlets that have every incentive to make outlandish claims about Russian behavior. Considering how many U.S.-supplied weapons have ended up falling into the hands of ISIS in the past, these are not accusations that the U.S. wants to be throwing around against other governments without solid evidence.</p>
<p>Gardner’s proposal has no merit, and if it were adopted it would further poison relations with Moscow for no reason.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-ridiculous-proposal-to-label-russia-a-state-sponsor-of-terrorism/" rel="nofollow"><strong>The American Conservative</strong></a></p>
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Wed, 25 Apr 2018 03:04:40 -0400Daniel Larison<a href="/en/trump-opens-us-arms-sales-kiev-escalates-war-east-ukraine-and-ensures-more-russian-aid-rebels" title="[field_meta_title]">Trump Opens up US Arms Sales to Kiev, Escalates War in East Ukraine, and Ensures More Russian Aid for Rebels</a>https://russia-insider.com/en/trump-opens-us-arms-sales-kiev-escalates-war-east-ukraine-and-ensures-more-russian-aid-rebels
<p>Trump is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/12/20/trump-administration-approves-lethal-arms-sales-to-ukraine/?utm_term=.f6ce06dcaecc" rel="nofollow">pressing ahead</a> with the foolish option of arming Ukraine:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Trump administration has approved the first ever U.S. commercial sale of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine, in a clear break from the de facto U.S. ban on arms sales that dates back to the Obama administration.</p>
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<p>As I said last month, <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/trump-would-be-a-fool-to-arm-ukraine/" rel="nofollow">Trump would be a fool</a> to arm Ukraine, so it comes as no surprise that this is what he has decided. While the U.S. isn’t giving Ukraine everything it was asking for, it is still recklessly throwing weapons at the problem.</p>
<p>Russia will view this as a provocative act on our part, and it will respond with its own aggressive measures before long. <strong>When these weapons fail to have the desired effect, the drumbeat for sending more and more advanced weapons will start. </strong></p>
<p>Trump has already shown how easily he can be led by his advisers to endorse needlessly destructive measures. The U.S. will find itself caught in a fruitless and unnecessary competition with another major power that has far more at stake in the conflict.</p>
<p><strong>Because it has more at stake, Russia will always outmatch whatever support the U.S. provides,</strong> and so by adding more weapons to the mix the U.S. is simply fueling a conflict that it should be trying to resolve peacefully.</p>
<p><em>TAC</em> contributor Harry Kazianis objects to the sale:</p>
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<div class="media_embed"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" xml:lang="en">This is dumb. Why do this now? This weapons system won't change the situation on the ground and will only cause a reaction from Moscow. Dumb. Just dumb--just like the NSS. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Russia?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" rel="nofollow">#Russia</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Ukraine?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" rel="nofollow">#Ukraine</a><a href="https://t.co/nqbismDgu2" rel="nofollow">https://t.co/nqbismDgu2</a></p>
<div>— Harry Kazianis (@GrecianFormula)</div>
<a href="https://twitter.com/GrecianFormula/status/943636364263940096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" rel="nofollow">December 21, 2017</a></blockquote>
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<p><strong>The Ukraine decision fits into a pattern of bad choices by the president in which he regularly sides with the advisers and Cabinet officials favoring the more aggressive available option. </strong></p>
<p>When they counsel caution as Mattis and Tillerson did on the question of recognizing Jerusalem, Trump ignores them and goes with the more provocative option.</p>
<p>When they counsel escalation and confrontation, as Mattis and Tillerson did in this case, only then does Trump listen to them.</p>
<p>This leads him to make the wrong call on many major issues from escalating the war in Afghanistan to increasing support for the Saudi-led war on Yemen to decertifying the nuclear deal.</p>
<p><strong>Trump is instinctively drawn to more belligerent and dangerous options, and he heeds his advisers only when they are recommending the things he already wants to do.</strong></p>
<p>When they suggest anything else, he dismisses their concerns or publicly rebukes them. As a result, Trump’s foreign policy is defined by one mindlessly hawkish move after another.</p>
<p>P.S. Kazianis’ objections to the administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) and the timing of its release can be read <a href="http://theweek.com/articles/743987/trumps-new-foreign-policy-strategy-couldnt-have-been-released-worse-time" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-mindless-hawkishness-of-arming-ukraine/" rel="nofollow"><strong>The American Conservative</strong></a></p>
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Fri, 22 Dec 2017 09:12:00 -0500Daniel Larison<a href="/en/us-russia-rapprochement-would-be-unbelievably-easy/ri21866" title="[field_meta_title]">US-Russia Rapprochement Would Be Unbelievably Easy</a>https://russia-insider.com/en/us-russia-rapprochement-would-be-unbelievably-easy/ri21866
<p>U.S.-Russian relations are at one of their lowest points since the end of the Cold War—and there seems to be little appetite for improvement on the part of the Trump administration and Congress.</p>
<p>Egged on by anti-Russia hysteria in many parts of the American media, Congress has imposed new sanctions to penalize Moscow over its alleged meddling in the 2016 election. The sanctions legislation was written in such a way that the president cannot waive its requirements, which all but guarantees that they will remain the law—and an impediment to better relations—for a very long time to come.</p>
<p>Thanks to the many questionable contacts between some members of the Trump campaign and Russian officials, the administration has been unable to pursue any constructive engagement with Moscow without triggering accusations of doing Russia’s bidding. The administration’s response to this predicament has usually been to echo the most conventional hawkish views on disputed issues and make no concerted effort to repair frayed ties with the Russian government.</p>
<p>Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently delivered a <a href="https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2017/11/276002.htm" rel="nofollow">speech</a> at the Wilson Center in which he described Russia primarily in terms of the threat that it posed to Europe. Even as he stated that the U.S. desires a “productive new relationship” with Moscow, he framed previous breakdowns in relations as being purely the result of Russian “aggression.” In Tillerson’s oversimplified telling, “both attempts by the prior administration to reset the Russia and U.S.-Europe relationships have been followed by Russia invading its neighbor.” But that is not quite how things unfolded.</p>
<p>The 2008 war to which Tillerson refers was a product of the Georgian government’s recklessness, its overconfidence in Western promises, and the profoundly misguided allied pledge at the Bucharest NATO summit that Ukraine and Georgia would one day become members of the alliance. Whatever “reset” George W. Bush attempted early in his first term had long since given way to repeatedly antagonizing Moscow by withdrawing from the ABM Treaty, launching the Iraq war, promoting missile defense in central Europe, NATO expansion in eastern Europe, and U.S. support for the so-called “color” revolutions in the former Soviet Union.</p>
<p>The Obama-era “reset” achieved some initial successes, but this soon stalled out and was replaced by resentment over the passage of the Magnitsky Act and the bait-and-switch intervention for regime change in Libya that Russia had been persuaded not to oppose. Confrontation over the civil war in Syria also contributed significantly to the souring of U.S.-Russian relations. By the time the political crisis in Ukraine erupted in 2014, the hopeful atmosphere created by the “reset” was long gone, and the U.S. and allied response to that crisis contributed to further deterioration. If our government officials fail to recognize the U.S. role in creating bad relations between Washington and Moscow, they are bound to keep repeating the mistakes that their predecessors made.</p>
<p>All of this raises a question: Is a normal, productive relationship with Russia possible for the U.S.? Despite the significant obstacles outlined above, the answer is still yes.</p>
<p>As bad as relations have become over the last few years, they are still <strong>nowhere near as toxic and dangerous as they were at various points during the Cold War</strong>. That should show us that <strong>the U.S. and Russia have far fewer reasons to be at odds than in the past</strong>, and that our disagreements are much more manageable. Present-day Russia also has fewer ambitious goals for its foreign policy than the USSR did and poses much less of a threat to the U.S. and our allies. <strong>Nothing compels the U.S. to compete with Russia in its own backyard, and no U.S. interests are threatened by Russia’s maintenance of its handful of clients. In short, the U.S. and Russia do not have to be rivals in most cases, and the U.S. has no need to counter Russia wherever it has influence.</strong></p>
<p>It is important for European stability and international security more generally that the U.S. and Russia fashion a cooperative relationship that will allow both to secure mutual interests and manage their disagreements. When the two powers have been on reasonably good terms, tensions between Russia and its neighbors have also declined, which is in the interests of all concerned.</p>
<p>The benefits of an improved relationship aren’t limited only to Europe. A constructive relationship with Russia is very much needed to address many international problems, including but not limited to terrorism, securing nuclear materials, and resolving long-running conflicts. We have seen hints of what that cooperation can achieve in recent years with the Iran nuclear deal and the new arms reduction treaty with Russia, both of which required sustained diplomatic engagement. In order to repair ties with Russia, our government will need to make a similar effort over the long term, with Washington refraining from taking further provocative actions.</p>
<p>A good place for the Trump administration to start would be to reject the plan to send arms to Ukraine. Such a policy would be unwise in itself—and disastrous for any chance at improving America’s relationship with Russia.</p>
<hr /><p>Source: <strong><a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-rapprochement-with-putin-trump-russia-still-possible/" rel="nofollow">The American Conservative</a></strong></p>
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Wed, 20 Dec 2017 05:12:10 -0500Daniel Larison<a href="/en/trump-under-enormous-pressure-arm-kiev-he-would-be-fool-give/ri21732" title="[field_meta_title]">Trump Is Under Enormous Pressure to Arm Kiev. He Would Be a Fool to Give In</a>https://russia-insider.com/en/trump-under-enormous-pressure-arm-kiev-he-would-be-fool-give/ri21732
<p>John Hudson <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/johnhudson/how-russia-hawks-are-selling-trump-on-sending-weapons-to?utm_term=.tw1kQAbV5#.fllnopq2W" rel="nofollow">reports</a> on the push to get Trump to approve sending arms to Ukraine:</p>
<blockquote><p>President Donald Trump’s top advisers are closer now to achieving what seemed unthinkable at the start of his presidency: Shipping millions of dollars of US weapons to Ukraine’s embattled military.</p>
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<p>According to the report, Trump’s advisers think that the president will agree to arming Ukraine if they can persuade him that it will lead to “peace” and the Ukrainian government will pay for the weapons. It’s possible that they might sucker Trump into believing this, but he would be a fool to listen to them.</p>
<p>Sending arms to Ukraine makes a dramatic increase in violence more likely. It will almost certainly lead to escalation and will make a peace settlement even harder to reach.</p>
<p>There is no military necessity for providing these weapons to Ukraine now, unless the goal is to encourage their government to go on the offensive. That obviously won’t lead to “peace,” but rather to a renewed conflict that Ukraine can’t win.</p>
<p>Ukraine isn’t in a great position to pay for the weapons, either. Hudson continues:</p>
<blockquote><p>Requiring Ukraine to pay for the arms package is not an ideal situation for cash-strapped Kiev, which has allies on Capitol Hill who are more than willing to foot the bill.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In short, Trump’s advisers have to deceive him into thinking that arming Ukraine won’t have the destabilizing and provocative effect that it is very likely to have, and they have to make him think that Ukraine will pay for something that it can’t really afford and that hawks in Congress want to give away.</p>
<p>Trump is gullible and doesn’t know enough about these issues to understand the implications, so his advisers will probably succeed.</p>
<p>If I had to guess, Trump will end up going along with the bad advice he is receiving. He doesn’t know enough to realize when he’s being misled, and he tends to favor more aggressive policies because he mistakenly thinks they project “strength.” That makes him unusually susceptible to hawkish demands to do irresponsible and destructive things.</p>
<p>Arming Ukraine would be an extraordinarily foolish thing for Trump to do, and so it is probably what he will decide to do.</p>
<hr /><p>Source: <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/trump-would-be-a-fool-to-arm-ukraine/" rel="nofollow">The American Conservative</a></p>
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Tue, 28 Nov 2017 03:11:16 -0500Daniel Larison<a href="/en/politics/only-reason-arm-ukraine-encourage-it-restart-war/ri21224" title="[field_meta_title]">The Only Reason to Arm Ukraine Is to Encourage It to Restart the War</a>https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/only-reason-arm-ukraine-encourage-it-restart-war/ri21224
<p>Antony Blinken <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/opinion/trump-ukraine-russia.html" rel="nofollow">wants</a> the Trump administration to arm Ukraine. He describes the argument of opponents of this proposal:</p>
<blockquote><p>That ban was heavily debated during the last administration. Its proponents argued that any military escalation favored Moscow, for whom the stakes were higher and the ability to quickly pour more lethal weapons into Ukraine much greater.</p>
<p>They were concerned Ukraine would be emboldened to act out militarily and overplay its hand. They knew that Moscow sought to divide us from our European partners, most of whom opposed lethal aid.</p>
<p>President Barack Obama concluded that we should keep the focus where we had the advantage: on tough sanctions, economic aid to Ukraine, training for its troops, support for its reform efforts — especially combating endemic corruption — and determined diplomacy.</p>
<p>That was then.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Give Blinken credit for describing the case against arming Ukraine so well that he unwittingly refutes his own argument. None of the proposal’s many flaws has disappeared in the last few years.</p>
<p>Nothing has changed that would make arming Ukraine any less foolish and reckless than it was in 2014, 2015, or 2016. It is still the case that the stakes in Ukraine are much higher for Russia than they are for the U.S., and Russia could easily match whatever level of support the U.S. chose to provide.</p>
<p>There is no military necessity for sending arms at this point, and the only reason one would consider doing so is if one wished to encourage the Ukrainian government to go on the offensive. Leonid Bershidsky <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-01/sending-defensive-arms-to-ukraine-would-be-deadly" rel="nofollow">explained</a> this very clearly a couple months ago the <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/arming-ukraine-is-still-folly/" rel="nofollow">last time</a> <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-enormous-folly-of-arming-ukraine/" rel="nofollow">this horrible idea resurfaced</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>Two years after both sides have largely kept to existing demarcation lines (minor encroachments aside), it is militarily unnecessary to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons unless the U.S. wants to encourage it to try to reclaim the “people’s republics.”</p>
<p>That would be a mistake. Though Russia doesn’t have enough resources to take over and hold Ukraine while still staying on the lookout for other military threats, it has plenty of money, firepower and determination to defend the separatist statelets.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Our major European allies are still strongly opposed to sending weapons, and doing so would fracture what allied unity there is on Ukraine. Charles Kupchan <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2017/08/07/why-giving-ukraine-lethal-weapons-would-be-a-massive-mistake/?utm_term=.f4af9ca2ac2e" rel="nofollow">commented</a> on this over the summer:</p>
<blockquote><p>Europeans are already on edge due to Congress’s recent sanctions legislation, which imposes measures not coordinated with the European Union and that have the potential to cause undue harm to European companies.</p>
<p>If Washington decides to head off on its own and send lethal weapons to Ukraine, solidarity on Ukraine may well come to end.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Blinken later asserts, “Defensive weapons for Ukraine is an idea whose time has come.” There is no reason to believe that, the idea remains as bankrupt as it has always been, and it would be an act of extraordinary folly to do this.</p>
<p>The proposal to send “lethal aid” to Ukraine has no merit, and yet we hear periodic demands for doing something that would achieve nothing except to escalate the conflict and get more Ukrainians killed.</p>
<p>Source: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-extraordinary-folly-of-arming-ukraine/"><strong>The American Conservative</strong></a></p>
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Wed, 11 Oct 2017 03:10:30 -0400Daniel Larison<a href="/en/politics/yemen-another-country-where-us-and-al-qaeda-are-same-side/ri19733" title="[field_meta_title]">Yemen: Another Country Where US and Al-Qaeda Are on the Same Side</a>https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/yemen-another-country-where-us-and-al-qaeda-are-same-side/ri19733
<p><a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/" rel="nofollow">The AP </a><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/al-qaida-leader-says-group-fought-alongside-us-backed-forces/2017/05/01/6412647e-2e4e-11e7-a335-fa0ae1940305_story.html?utm_term=.11c553cbd53c" rel="nofollow">reports</a> on something that has been more or less<strong> <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-u-s-and-al-qaeda-are-on-the-same-side-in-yemen/" rel="nofollow">common knowledge</a> for years</strong>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>The leader of al-Qaida’ branch in Yemen said that his militants have often fought alongside Yemeni government factions — remarks that could embarrass the U.S.-backed coalition fighting the impoverished Arab country’s Shiite rebels.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>On top of that, some of Hadi’s associates have been <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/40200/yemens-complex-battlefield-includes-al-qaeda-links-allies" rel="nofollow">sanctioned</a> by our government for their connections to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).</p>
<p>This shouldn’t come as a surprise. There have been reports of collusion between coalition-backed forces and AQAP for years, and the coalition has made no secret that its priority in Yemen is fighting the Houthis and their allies.</p>
<p>The Saudis have tried to spin their war as a fight against Iran, which has both greatly exaggerated Iran’s role in the conflict and distracted Washington from the gains that AQAP has been able to make under the coalition’s noses.</p>
<p>The only enemy the U.S. plausibly has in Yemen is the one that our government’s policy has been helping to strengthen for over two years.</p>
<p><strong>The coalition hasn’t been embarrassed by previous evidence that AQAP is on their side in this war, and it won’t be embarrassed by more evidence showing the same thing.</strong></p>
<p>They evidently don’t care if they are found to be cahoots with jihadists, and they probably assume that Washington won’t ever hold them accountable for this behavior.</p>
<p>This should embarrass politicians from both parties that have backed the Saudis’ atrocious intervention, and it should make the Trump administration halt its support for the war, but neither of those things is likely to happen.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-u-s-and-al-qaeda-are-still-on-the-same-side-in-yemen/" rel="nofollow"><strong>The American Conservative</strong></a></p>
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Wed, 3 May 2017 14:05:29 -0400Daniel Larison<a href="/en/politics/trump-and-syrian-safe-zones/ri18702" title="[field_meta_title]">Does Trump Even Know What His Syria 'Safe Zones' Would Entail?</a>https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/trump-and-syrian-safe-zones/ri18702
<p>One section of Trump’s <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.scribd.com/document/337545704/Draft-Executive-Order-To-Limit-Entry-of-Muslim-Refugees-and-Immigrants">draft executive order</a> concerning refugees includes a commitment to create a plan for the establishment of safe zones (or “safe areas” as the document calls them) in Syria and “the surrounding region”:</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><blockquote data-lang="en"><p>Trump's order also creates a path for "safe areas" in Syria to protect civilians that the US refuses to take in. <a rel="nofollow" href="https://t.co/R8iR3i0gr1">https://t.co/R8iR3i0gr1</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="https://t.co/HVrmz098u5">pic.twitter.com/HVrmz098u5</a></p><div>— Daniel Solomon (@Dan_E_Solo) </div><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/Dan_E_Solo/status/824337075944222721">January 25, 2017</a></blockquote><p> </p><p>Trump’s support for safe zones in Syria dates back many months. It has never been clear that he understands what establishing safe zones entails, but that hasn’t <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/trump-isnt-a-candidate-of-restraint/">stopped</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-vp-debate-and-syria/">him</a> from <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/trumps-jumbled-deal-obsessed-foreign-policy/">repeatedly</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-folly-of-safe-zones/">endorsing</a> the idea.</p><p>Creating safe zones would require a large deployment of ground forces that would be prepared to defend it against anyone that might attack, and the mission would be an open-ended one. The U.S. would almost certainly end up providing the bulk of the forces committed to the defense of these areas, and they would immediately become targets of jihadists and would likely end up clashing with Syrian regime forces.</p><p>Whatever Trump voters thought they were getting by supporting him, I’m reasonably sure sending tens of thousands of Americans to occupy parts of Syria for years to come wasn’t it.</p><p>I’ll quote John Ford again on the <a rel="nofollow" href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-syrian-safe-zones-are-unworkable-18232">risks</a> that come with the creation of safe zones in Syria:</p><blockquote><p>Safe zones have a superficial appeal to western policymakers who want to protect civilians but are afraid of the consequences of deeper engagement in Syria.</p><p>The appeal is illusory. True safe zones would create the risk of a wider war with Russia.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>Even if it didn’t lead to a war with a major power, it would still represent a dramatic and unwarranted escalation of U.S. involvement in Syria’s civil war. Most Americans won’t support that, and Trump would be exceedingly foolish to do it.</p>
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Fri, 27 Jan 2017 01:01:00 -0500Daniel Larison<a href="/en/politics/flynns-dangerous-goal-regime-change/ri17933" title="[field_meta_title]">Michael Flynn’s Dangerous Goal of Regime Change</a>https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/flynns-dangerous-goal-regime-change/ri17933
<p>Christopher Fettweis <a rel="nofollow" href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/michael-flynn-donald-trumps-machiavelli-18544?page=2">reviews</a> Flynn and Ledeen’s Field of Fight. Here he comments on their fixation on Iran:</p><blockquote><p><em>Although regime change in Iran is the central goal of the global war on terror, Flynn and Ledeen do not advocate military action. Instead they believe that the task can be accomplished politically, by lending support to the internal Iranian opposition. The Soviet Union was brought down internally, after all, so why not Iran?</em></p><p><em>How exactly the United States could trigger the collapse of the Iranian regime without sparking a war is left to the imagination of the reader. Flynn and Ledeen are uninterested in details. Instead we are told that it would take only determination and courage to motivate the Iranian people to send the Mullahs into oblivion [bold mine-DL], without having to fire a shot. Failure to enable 2009’s “Green Revolution” is, by their estimation, one of President Obama’s many unforgivable decisions.</em></p></blockquote><p>Even if it were desirable to destabilize yet another country in the region, this shows just how deluded Flynn and Ledeen are when it comes to achieving their goal of regime change. First, they assume that Iranians would cooperate in pursuing a goal that most of them don’t actually support. They mistakenly view the election protests of 2009-2010 as a movement aimed at overthrowing the regime, but it was something quite different and had the goal of reforming the existing system. Flynn and Ledeen fault the U.S. for not doing more to help that movement, but this wrongly assumes that the movement’s leaders wanted U.S. help (they didn’t) and that U.S. assistance would be useful to them (it wouldn’t have been). They assume they know what most Iranians want, but ignore their enduring resentment against foreign interference in their politics generally and hostility to American interference in particular. They also make a typical hawkish mistake in both grossly exaggerating the threat from a foreign regime and assuming that eliminating that threat will be easy and cheap. This is all consistent with the shoddy analysis we have seen from other parts of their book, and it confirms that Trump is going to be getting some very bad advice from his top security adviser.</p><p>In addition to all of their errors of analysis, Flynn and Ledeen have the wrong goal. If the U.S. tried to do what Flynn and Ledeen want, it would increase regional tensions and hurt the Iranian opposition. Neither the U.S. nor most Iranians would benefit from this, but it would strengthen the hand of regime hard-liners. It would give those hard-liners a ready-made excuse for increased repression, and would increase the likelihood of armed conflict over the longer term. When our government has made regime change in another country the official policy in the past, it has usually not been long before force is used to achieve it. A war with Iran might not come right away, but if Flynn convinces Trump that regime change should be the goal of our policy it becomes much more likely in the future.</p>
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Sun, 4 Dec 2016 10:12:00 -0500Daniel Larison<a href="/en/politics/romney-state-would-be-disastrous/ri17734" title="[field_meta_title]">Romney at State Would Be Disastrous</a>https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/romney-state-would-be-disastrous/ri17734
<p>Mitt Romney is reportedly <a rel="nofollow" href="http://ktla.com/2016/11/21/romney-being-considered-for-secretary-of-state-following-trump-meeting/">being considered</a> for Secretary of State as well:</p><blockquote><p><em>Vice President-elect Mike Pence confirmed Sunday that Romney is under “active consideration” for secretary of state.</em></p><p><em>“The President-elect was very grateful that Gov. Mitt Romney came in. They had a good meeting. It was a warm and substantive exchange. I know he is under active consideration to be secretary of state of the United States along with some other distinguished Americans,” Pence said on “Fox News Sunday.”</em></p></blockquote><p>I doubt that Romney would take the job, and it seems unlikely that Trump would offer it to him. This seems to be more of an effort at repairing intra-party divisions by extending an olive branch to one of the most vocal anti-Trump Republicans. Nonetheless, it is worth saying a few things about the prospect of having Romney in Trump’s Cabinet.</p><p>Putting Romney at State would be a poor choice on the merits, though it would certainly be no worse than picking Giuliani. Like Giuliani, Romney has no foreign policy experience to speak of, and he has consistently derided every effort at diplomatic engagement over the last eight years. I can think of few other top positions in government for which Romney is more poorly-suited. Unless Romney completely reinvented himself once again, his foreign policy views would be just as bad as Bolton’s or Giuliani’s, and I have a hard time believing that a Romney-led State Department would pursue improved ties with Russia. Romney would bring with him everything that was and is wrong with conventional Republican foreign policy, and he would presumably be an advocate for all of the confrontational policies that he supported during his last presidential campaign. Neither would be good for U.S. foreign policy. If the choice really is down to Giuliani or Romney, the next administration will have a very aggressive and hawkish Secretary of State, and there will be no point in pretending otherwise.</p>
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Wed, 23 Nov 2016 09:11:43 -0500Daniel Larison<a href="/en/politics/repairing-us-russia-relationship/ri17650" title="[field_meta_title]">How Trump Can Repair US-Russian Relations</a>https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/repairing-us-russia-relationship/ri17650
<p><em>I was part of the second panel at TAC‘s foreign policy conference yesterday on U.S.-Russian relations. Here are the remarks I gave:</em></p><p>U.S.-Russian relations are worse than they have been at any point since the end of the Cold War, and both governments have defined their interests in Syria and Ukraine in such a way that it is difficult to see how they will improve in the near future unless one of them changes its positions. We can’t control how Moscow interprets its interests in these places, but we can reassess and modify how we think about ours.</p><p>Great powers always have some competing and conflicting interests, and so the task of wise political leaders is to distinguish between disputes over what are ultimately tangential interests and those that genuinely touch on matters of vital importance and then to find ways to manage disputes over the latter without stumbling into armed conflict.</p><p>Our relationship with Russia has suffered from repeated disappointments and setbacks in part because successive administrations have failed to make that distinction, and instead Washington has sought to compete with Moscow in places that matter greatly to them but which matter very little to us.</p><p>We have seen that with attempted NATO expansion deeper into the former Soviet Union, and we’re seeing it again today in Syria. Failing to distinguish between tangential and vital interests not only exposes the U.S. and Europe to unnecessary risks, but practically guarantees that the U.S. will be and be seen as the loser in these competitions.</p><p>If that’s right, we need to scale back our ambitions and restrain the ambitions of our allies and clients as much as possible to minimize the frequency and intensity of disputes with Russia.</p><p>The conventional wisdom in Washington often seems to be that the U.S. must counter Russia whenever it does something undesirable, but that is rarely accompanied by an explanation of how that actually makes the U.S. or our allies more secure, and the proposed method of countering them often involves exposing us and our allies to greater risks for little apparent gain.</p><p>We see this most clearly in debates over what to do in Syria, where repeated demands from hawks to create “no-fly” and safe zones would very likely put us on a collision course with Russia in a war in which the U.S. has no need to participate.</p><p>More aggressive policies toward the Syrian government and Russia lost one of their most vocal supporters when Clinton was defeated last week, but we shouldn’t assume that the danger has completely passed. As long as Washington takes for granted that the U.S. has both the right and obligation to take sides in these conflicts, the danger of an avoidable clash with another great power is always present.</p><p>It is possible that the new administration may be more willing to find a modus vivendi with Moscow, but I’m not sure that we should expect that much change in practice. There have been hints that the new administration is less inclined to support rebel forces in Syria, and it appears less likely to send weapons to Ukraine than Clinton would have been, but a lot of that may depend on the extent of Vice President Pence’s influence on policy.</p><p>During the vice presidential debate, he said that “provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength” and insisted that the U.S. should strike at the Syrian government if Russia continued to be involved in aiding the government there. Unfortunately, it’s not just the next vice president we have to worry about.</p><p>The incoming administration’s Cabinet and National Security Council appear likely to be filled by hard-liners such as Newt Gingrich, Michael Flynn, and Rudy Giuliani. John Bolton is another well-known hawk who has been mentioned as a possible nominee for Secretary of State. Some of the other names mentioned for major Cabinet posts such as Stephen Hadley and Sen. Bob Corker also suggest far more continuity with prevailing Republican foreign policy than not.</p><p>Gen. Flynn has been cited as an example of someone in Trump’s circle who would favor greater security cooperation with Russia on counter-terrorism, but in the book he co-authored with Michael Ledeen he has said that he believes Putin “fully intends to do the same thing as, and in tandem with, the Iranians: pursue the war against us.”</p><p>He and Ledeen claim to believe that the U.S. is in a global war against an imaginary alliance of states and terrorist groups: “The war is on. We face a working coalition that extends from North Korea and China to Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.” They also say that the U.S. is losing its war against this so-called “alliance.”</p><p>It would have dangerous implications for our Russia policy in the coming years if Flynn has a significant role in a Trump administration. If a top adviser to the new administration thinks Russia is helping to wage a global war against America, that could spell serious trouble for our relations with Russia and other states as well. We can hope that U.S. policy won’t reflect the alarmist views of Flynn and Ledeen, but the fact that one of Trump’s senior advisers holds such views should make us wary.</p><p>For the moment, however, the danger of direct confrontation with Russia appears to be less than it would have been with a Clinton win, but we shouldn’t automatically assume that there will be much effort at engagement with Moscow. There is a possibility of reducing tensions with Russia, but that will depend on whether Moscow is willing to go through another attempt at rapprochement and how much influence conventional Republican hawks have on the shaping of Russia policy.</p><p>Of course, the easiest way to keep irritants out of the relationship with Russia is to make sure not to add new ones. Gratuitous moves aimed at poking Moscow in the eye just for the sake of doing it obviously won’t produce the cooperation Washington wants, and they will become part of the litany of complaints about American behavior that Russian leaders and diplomats recite.</p><p>Reviving old missile defense schemes in Europe serves no good purpose. Continuing to treat further NATO expansion as if it were desirable creates unnecessary tension and gives false encouragement to prospective members. Further sanctions on Russia would achieve no more than existing sanctions have and should not be imposed.</p><p>Whenever there is a temptation to “punch the Russians in the nose” (as John Kasich put it), we need to consider carefully what we are trying to achieve, what the likely reaction will be, and whether it is really necessary.</p><p>We should also bear in mind that forcing another great power into a humiliating climbdown runs the risk of producing a more volatile crisis down the road, so even if a proposed measure will “work” as intended we ought to consider the long-term consequences of our policies.</p><p>Our relationship with Russia has become as bad as it is in no small part because our policymakers have failed to consider all of those things, and have pressed ahead with questionable policies without thinking through what could go wrong.</p><p>The U.S. and Russia—and Russia’s neighbors—would benefit from a constructive relationship between our governments, and despite the deterioration over the last four or five years it should still be possible to improve relations and minimize the chance of great power conflict in this century. First, it will require an acknowledgment that attempts to punish and isolate Russia have completely failed to alter Moscow’s behavior, and therefore a different approach needs to be tried.</p><p>Second, it requires that the U.S. and Russia not put off discussing their significant disagreements as they have in previous attempts to repair relations, which has only allowed those problems to go unaddressed.</p><p>As Matthew Rojansky wrote in The New York Times earlier this year: “One way not to solve the problem is to continue our focus on cooperation as a search for good conversations with Russia about areas of ostensible agreement, while putting off hard but necessary conversations about our persistent disagreements. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration’s “reset” succumbed to exactly this pattern.”</p><p>To have those hard but necessary conversations will require more and more consistent diplomatic engagement, and doing that will mean ditching the idea that engagement with another great power represents a concession to or reward for them. The U.S. should do this because this is how it can advance its interests with fewer costs than by trying to compel changes in other states’ behavior.</p><p>That process won’t produce immediate results, but it will begin the work of restoring a normal, functional diplomatic relationship that Washington has largely stopped trying to cultivate except for crisis management.</p><p>It also can’t fix everything we don’t like about Russian foreign policy, but then that isn’t within our power to fix. But it will lay the foundation for a more productive and cooperative relationship in the future.</p><p>It should also keep the chances of great power conflict at a minimum, and that is in the interests of all concerned. We should also remember that an improved U.S.-Russian relationship would tend to benefit the countries that have been caught up in our rivalry and which suffer considerably from the competition between our governments.</p>
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Mon, 21 Nov 2016 02:11:14 -0500Daniel Larison<a href="/en/politics/flynns-warped-worldview-and-trumps-foreign-policy/ri17658" title="[field_meta_title]">Michael Flynn Is a Bad, Dangerous Pick for National Security Advisor</a>https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/flynns-warped-worldview-and-trumps-foreign-policy/ri17658
<p>Trump is reportedly <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.nbcnews.com/card/donald-trump-considering-mike-flynn-national-security-adviser-n685116">considering</a> making Michael Flynn his National Security Adviser:</p><blockquote><p>President-elect Donald Trump is considering retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn to be his national security adviser, a source familiar with the transition process told NBC News on Wednesday.</p></blockquote><p>Flynn has been one of Trump’s top advisers throughout the campaign, so if he is selected this is probably the least surprising choice Trump will make. There is no question in my mind that this is a bad choice. Having Flynn in this position means that Trump’s foreign policy is going to be shaped to a large extent by someone with very dangerous views.</p><p>I have talked a bit about Flynn’s <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/flynns-warped-worldview/">disturbing</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/flynns-warped-worldview-and-russia/">worldview</a> before, and I mentioned it again in my remarks on the relationship with Russia on Tuesday, but I think it merits reviewing again. T<span style="font-size: 13.008px;">he biggest red flag is the </span><a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.amazon.com/Field-Fight-Global-Against-Radical-ebook/dp/B0191K3HE0">book</a><span style="font-size: 13.008px;"> he co-authored with Michael Ledeen. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.008px;">The fact that he would work with Ledeen is damning enough by itself, and the content of the book shows just how delusional and hard-line Flynn is. One reviewer </span><a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-07-11/michael-flynn-s-all-out-war-on-terror">summed up</a><span style="font-size: 13.008px;"> the book’s thesis this way:</span></p><blockquote><p>Michael Flynn, who served as Obama’s second Defense Intelligence Agency director, takes the opposite view. “Field of Fight,” a new book Flynn co-wrote with historian Michael Ledeen, argues that America is up against a global alliance between radical jihadis and anti-American nation states like Russia, Cuba and North Korea.</p><p><span style="font-size: 13.008px;">They say this war will last at least a generation. And they say it will require outside ground forces to go after al Qaeda and the Islamic State as well as a sustained information campaign to discredit the ideology of radical Islam.</span></p></blockquote><p>It can’t be stressed enough that this is a deranged view of the threats to the U.S. Nothing could be more foolish or dangerous than believing in this non-existent “global alliance,” which lumps together disparate and competing states and groups and treats them all as part of the same threat.</p><p>This not only grossly exaggerates the threats to the U.S., but it also distorts our understanding of the threats that do exist by absurdly linking them to one another.</p><p>Needless to say, this view insists on endless U.S. entanglement in the affairs of predominantly Muslim countries for decades to come, and it requires increased hostility toward both Russia and Iran (among others). It is little more than reheated Cheneyism with a dollop of Santorumesque hyperbole. That’s the last thing the U.S. needs, and it is not what a lot of Trump’s voters thought they were voting for.</p><p>In a speech he gave last year, Flynn <a rel="nofollow" href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/27/the-text-of-general-flynns-speech/">said</a>, “We should assail isolationism, any form of American withdrawal, and the fallacy of moral equivalence.” To some extent, this is the standard boilerplate that most people in Washington use to affirm their commitment to U.S. “leadership,” but it is significant that he rejects “any form of American withdrawal.”</p><p>That suggests that he isn’t interested in reducing U.S. commitments abroad anywhere, and a Trump foreign policy influenced by Flynn is very likely to be one in which those commitments only increase.</p>
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Fri, 18 Nov 2016 09:11:03 -0500Daniel Larison